Bitter Blood (34 page)

One other important question remained.

“Is it your intention to take the children back to New Mexico and there seek complete custody of them?”

“No.”

Sands began his cross-examination with the implication that not seeing the boys was Tom’s choice.

“Have you not been advised that you are welcome to see them any time that you want to in North Carolina?”

“Oh, yes.”

As expected, Sands peppered Tom with questions about Kathy, trying to leave the impression that their relationship caused the failure of his marriage. He also tried to show that Tom had fallen behind in support and medical payments and hadn’t lived up to the separation agreement. A testy exchange developed about the $1,500 Tom was supposed to pay for Susie’s share of the household appliances she left behind. Sands also brought up another touchy subject—the bond Tom had been forced to post so he could see his children at Christmas.

“Are you resisting a bond on this particular occasion?”

“On the matter of principle, yes. If the judge so orders, I will sign the bond.”

“Is that why you caused all the problems in New Mexico and cost her all that expense was because of principle?” Sands said to Horsley’s objection.

“Mr. Lynch, you resisted completely the courts of North Carolina having jurisdiction over these children, didn’t you?” Sands asked.

“I filed for divorce in New Mexico on the advice of my counselor because he wanted the courts in New Mexico to have jurisdiction over the divorce.”

“Yes, sir, and y’all fought like the dickens to keep it out there, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know if you could say we fought like the dickens, but we had a couple of hearings with the judge. It was never my wish to have custody of the boys…My own personal wishes are that the boys remain in the custody of their mother.”

“You think she has been a good mother to the children, hasn’t she?”

“I think so.”

Sands brought up Dr. Ron Davis, the psychologist Susie had appointed to negotiate visitation.

“You have completely refused to cooperate with Dr. Davis in regard to visitation, haven’t you?”

“Seems to me it is the other way around,” Tom replied.

Horsley rose at the end of Sands’s examination to ask Tom a question he considered crucial.

“Is it your intention to marry Kathy Anderson once you are divorced?”

“Yes, it is.”

Susie wore a simple blouse with a Peter Pan collar as she took the stand. Her face was pale and powdered, her bearing demure and proper. She answered her attorney’s questions in a soft voice, describing the boys’ trip from Albuquerque the previous Christmas as “a rather unnerving flight.”

“Do you feel the children will be able to fly on an airplane by themselves again?” Sands asked later

“I would prefer that they did not.”

Sands led her through questions about the boys’ problems both before and after the breakup of her marriage. John had “severe emotional problems” prior to the breakup, she said, and she had sought help for him.

“The psychologist communicated to me that children usually show the first signs of trouble in a marriage,” she said, before Horsley could object to the hearsay testimony. “He felt that John’s emotional problem was due to our conflict.”

She went on to say that after her return to North Carolina, she’d taken the boys to Dr. Davis because of “a great deal of conflict” between the two, but the conflict had since disappeared.

Susie recited a long list of plans she’d made for her sons in coming weeks before Sands asked, “Are you afraid of the children not returning if they leave again?”

“I would not have been except for the kind of conflicts we had over jurisdiction, and so currently I am, yes.”

“Mrs. Lynch, your jurisdictional matter has been resolved, hasn’t it?’’ Horsley asked on cross-examination.

“Yes, it has.”

Dr. Ron Davis was a witness in Susie’s behalf. He told of his telephone conversation with Tom the year before and of Tom’s objections to his recommendation of a succession of short visits instead of a single, long summer visit, to keep the boys from becoming homesick and miserable. He described the children as apprehensive because of the uncertainty about their visits with their father.

Near the end of his questions to Davis, Sands brought up another call Dr. Davis had received, this one from Leonard Timpone, a Chicago lawyer who had been Janie’s high school sweetheart and a chum of Tom. Davis had thought the call hostile and an attempt to intimidate him. Although he tried several times to get those impressions on the record, Sands was unsuccessful.

Delores had asked Leonard, the son of her old friends, Jackie and Mario Timpone, to make that call, although Tom and his father objected to it.

“She said, ‘Look, Leonard’s a big shot attorney. He’ll do this and do that,’” Tom recalled later. “Not only was this way out of his jurisdiction, I got the feeling he wasn’t really interested. Leonard’s one of these blustery Italian guys, Mr. Personality, Wild Man. He would’ve been the perfect guy to alienate the entire state of North Carolina.”

Horsley had one primary question of Davis, and it was about the boys.

“Do you think it would be helpful for them to see their father more frequently and have a relationship with him?”

“Sure.”

Delores had sat through the hearing barely able to control herself, and as it was drawing to a close, without warning, Susie’s lawyer called her to the stand.

“Mrs. Lynch, did you contact Mr. Leonard Timpone about representing you or your son on this particular matter?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Was he retained to represent your son or represent you, or both?”

“I guess both.”

Horsley had no questions, and Delores returned to her seat. Rarely had she said so little about something she felt so strongly about.

Thus the testimony came to its nondramatic conclusion. Only the judge’s decision was left to be heard, and when it came, it was temporarily pleasing only to Tom. He could pick up the boys the following day, July 24, and after spending one day in Greensboro with them, take them to New Mexico. He would not have to sign a bond, and he must return the boys by August 12 so they could prepare for school. Final decision or a permanent schedule of visitation would be postponed to give Susie’s lawyers time to take more depositions in New Mexico to be presented at a future hearing involving only the lawyers.

The only deposition Susie took that fall was from Tom. Her lawyer in Albuquerque, Barbara Shapiro, did that, asking mainly about property and financial matters. When her questions ventured into other areas, Tom’s sullen answers were short and less than illuminating.

Shapiro wanted to know about the marriage breakup and pressed Tom for his reasons for not talking to Susie about his divorce action.

“I didn’t feel any need to discuss it with her,” he replied. “You get divorced, you get divorced.”

Shapiro also asked about Kathy, learning that she had quit work in 1981, was now studying at the University of New Mexico, and that she and Tom shared a joint checking account to which only Tom contributed.

When Tom responded that he hadn’t declared Kathy as a dependent on his tax returns, Shapiro asked why.

“You mean I can?” Tom asked.

“Sure,” said Shapiro.

Judge McHugh had set October 1 as the deadline for additional depositions from Susie. When none was received, he summoned the lawyers for final arguments. On November 22, he issued his order. In the summer of 1983, Tom would have the boys for the month of July. Each summer after that, he would get them for thirty-five days beginning on July 1. He would get a week at Christmas every other year, beginning in 1983, and a week at spring break in even-numbered years. He also would have the boys for spring break in 1983. He could visit them in North Carolina at any time with two weeks’ written notice. Transportation arrangements would be Tom’s responsibility, as would all costs. Until the summer of 1986, one parent would have to accompany the boys on one leg of the flight to assure that they changed planes safely. If that was Susie, Tom had to pay her expenses. After 1986, if Susie wanted to accompany the boys, it would be at her expense.

Tom’s lawyer, Bill Horsley, had mixed emotions about the judgment. He thought the judge had compromised, trying to satisfy everybody. It wasn’t bad as a beginning, he told Tom.

Tom had other ideas. He thought thirty-five days in the summer “ridiculous.” The travel stipulation, he felt, had been put in to penalize him. Susie had won. Her name, he was convinced, had prevailed.

“I got hometowned bad,” he said bitterly.

Delores was furious. She told friends that Tom never had a chance. The courts of North Carolina, she said, were under the thumb of “that old battle-ax,” Susie’s aunt, the retired chief justice.

Horsley knew that wasn’t the case, but he never would be able to convince Tom and his mother of it.

“Peter McHugh is one of the best district court judges in the state,” Horsley said later. “If anything he would have leaned over backwards to prevent that impression. I wasn’t real happy with the decision, but I didn’t feel like we got hometowned. I could see how they might feel that way.”

The enmity between Delores and Susie had grown even stronger in recent months. No longer was Delores allowed to talk to the boys by telephone. She had the evidence on tape.

“Hello, Susie?”

“Yes,” Susie said before the voice had fully registered. When the identification hit her, she sprang forth in a fury, “Delores, now listen! I can’t allow you to upset the children anymore! These boys are settled and you’re not playing games with them anymore! Now good-bye!”

“Now what in the world is the matter with her?” Delores later recalled thinking. “I didn’t say anything wrong.”

She called back immediately. “Susie,” she said, her voice dripping artificial sweetness, “what are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about! And don’t call back anymore!” Click.

Despite the judge’s ruling, Susie was more unhappy than ever, more watchful and protective of her children. Neighbors noticed that she was the only mother in the neighborhood who went to the curb with her children to await the school bus every morning, who stayed with them until they were safely aboard, who hovered over them even at play. She bickered more frequently with her mother, who worried that Susie was too preoccupied with her children, too absorbed in her bitterness for Tom, about whom she had begun to speak in sinister tones. Florence worried, too, that Susie was pushing herself too hard to keep top grades, sitting up until early morning hours studying. And, frankly, Florence was irritated that Susie had a regular late-night caller, a visitor of whom she disapproved.

That visitor was Fritz Klenner, Susie’s first cousin. Florence and other family members had always thought him odd. He seemed to prowl mostly at night, and he had a fascination for guns and intrigue. The family thought him a medical student at Duke University, soon to be graduated with honors, certain to step into his aging and ailing father’s unusual practice in Reidsville. For years, he had assisted his father in his clinic on weekends, and Susie had renewed acquaintance with him when she began going to the clinic for her regular injections of vitamins. Susie was nearly six years older than Fritz, barely knew him as he was growing up, and rarely saw him for years, but now a close relationship had developed between them, rousing whispers of concern in the propriety-conscious Sharp and Newsom families. Most family members chose to believe that the cousins were simply consoling and supporting one another because both were going through divorces. Fritz’s marriage had come apart in 1981, and he’d seemed to be having a hard time because of it.

Susie told friends that the boys liked Fritz and she felt safe when he was around. But her mother had begun to suspect that Fritz was more than a friend and protector, and she was mortified by the prospect. Fritz was coming around entirely too much, Florence thought, often far after midnight, when he would roust Susie from her late-night studies by pecking on the dining room window, sometimes disturbing the sleep of other family members. Occasionally Florence got up in the morning to find Fritz sleeping on her couch. She feared that Susie was becoming too dependent on her strange cousin, who had a disturbing way of looking at people. Fritz, she knew, was quick to see conspiracies, and she wondered what fears and exotic theories he might be pumping into her daughter’s head. Was he encouraging the wild and scathing new tales that Susie had been concocting about Tom?

Susie even had brought up some of these tales to her lawyer. Tom was involved with drugs, gambling, and underworld characters, she told Sandy Sands just before the hearing that summer, and she was frightened by it.

“What in the world gives you that idea?” Sands asked.

She said that a friend of the family who was an FBI agent had told her. The FBI was getting ready to go after international smugglers, she said and Tom was just “a small fish in a big pond” but he was apt to get caught up in it. Pressed for her source, she wouldn’t reveal it and Sands discounted the tale and quickly put it out of mind.

Later, Sands noticed Fritz at the July hearing, slinking around conspiratorially. He wondered what Susie’s cousin was doing there, but it would be years before he realized that Fritz had to have been the source of Susie’s strange tale about Tom and the underworld.